Webpack - You may need an appropriate loader

Each time I come back to work with JavaScript, I struggle with webpack and transpilers. I need help here, I am stuck. Webpack is not finding appropriate loader even when specified.

webpack.config.js

const path = require( "path" );

module.exports = {
    entry: "./app.js",
    output: {
        filename: "starmap.js",
        path: path.resolve(__dirname,  "../asset/js/" )
    },
    mode : "development",
    module : {
        rules : [
            {
                test: /\\.js$/,
                exclude: /node_modules/,
                loader: "babel-loader",
                options: {
                    presets: [ "@babel/preset-env", "@babel/preset-react" ]
                }
            }
        ]
    }
}

package.json

{
  "name": "editor",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "description": "",
  "main": "app.js",
  "scripts": {
    "test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1"
  },
  "keywords": [],
  "author": "",
  "license": "ISC",
  "dependencies": {
    "react": "^17.0.0",
    "react-dom": "^17.0.0"
  },
  "devDependencies": {
    "@babel/cli": "^7.12.1",
    "@babel/core": "^7.12.3",
    "@babel/preset-env": "^7.12.1",
    "@babel/preset-react": "^7.12.1",
    "@webpack-cli/init": "^1.0.2",
    "babel-loader": "^8.1.0",
    "babel-plugin-syntax-dynamic-import": "^6.18.0",
    "css-loader": "^5.0.0",
    "style-loader": "^2.0.0",
    "terser-webpack-plugin": "^5.0.0",
    "webpack": "^5.1.3",
    "webpack-cli": "^4.1.0"
  }
}

app.js

import React from "react"
import { render } from "react-dom"

class Starmap extends React.Component {
    constructor() {
        super()
        this.state = []
    }

    render() {
        return "Hello world"
    }
}

render( <Starmap />, document.getElementById("customizer"))

.babelrc

{
  "presets": [
    "@babel/preset-env",
    "@babel/preset-react"
  ]
}

When I run webpack, I get this error:

ERROR in ./app.js 15:8
Module parse failed: Unexpected token (15:8)
You may need an appropriate loader to handle this file type, currently no loaders are configured to process this file. See https://webpack.js.org/concepts#loaders
| }
| 
> render( <Starmap />, document.getElementById("_customizer"))

But running npx babel app.js transpiles successfully. Is something wrong with my webpack config, I have watched carefully, everything seems okay.

Solution

It seems that your js is not being handled by the babel-loader. I believe the issue is in your test regex

change

test: /\\.js$/,

test: /\.js$/,